Voters get in line to cast their ballot at Merrol Hyde Magnet School in Hendersonville on Nov. 6, 2012. / Alexander Quinones / File / Gannett Tennessee

Written by

Chas Sisk

The Tennessean

Nearly four out of five provisional ballots cast in Tennessee in November were tossed out, according to statewide data, indicating that measures meant to ensure all legitimate votes were included resulted in only a few more being counted.

Only 1,623, or 23 percent, of the 7,097 paper provisional ballots cast by people who experienced trouble at the polls during the Nov. 6 general election were ruled legitimate by election officials, figures compiled by state election officials show.

The numbers suggest that at least some voters were disenfranchised by steps Republicans took before the 2012 elections, opponents say.

“People ought not to have to fight to vote in a democratic society,” said George Barrett, a Nashville civil rights attorney who is challenging the state’s photo identification law.

Republicans pushed the law through the legislature in 2011 as part of a nationwide attempt to ensure voter integrity, but Barrett and others have called it an attempt to deter voting among traditionally Democratic constituencies.

Election officials say the figures also show that only two-tenths of 1 percent of the 2.4 million Tennesseans who cast ballots in November actually ran into problems when they went to vote, which they take as an indication that the voter ID law worked how it was supposed to.

“I’d like to get to the point where it’s even lower,” said Mark Goins, Tennessee’s coordinator of elections, “but I’ll take this number when you look at the full scale of things.”

Provisional balloting has taken on added importance in the wake of the state’s new law, recent purges of inactive voters by election officials and the shift in control of Tennessee’s election commissions from Democrats to Republicans.

Nearly half of the provisional ballots issued in 2012 were issued in Shelby County, a Democratic stronghold that President Barack Obama carried by more than 25 percentage points. Almost 90 percent of the provisional ballots cast there were thrown out.

Elsewhere in the state, including in Davidson County, only about one in three provisional ballots was tossed.

Those who cast provisional ballots in November may think their votes were counted. But for a variety of reasons — ranging from their names not being on the rolls to voters’ own failure to follow through — the vast majority were not.

“I have no idea what happened,” said Frank Hammond, who was asked to cast a provisional ballot despite registering to vote soon after he moved to Hermitage from Memphis in September.

“I would have thought I would at least get a registration card for future elections.”

GOP-led changes to state election laws drew attention nationwide during the most recent election cycle.

The U.S. Justice Department filed suit in Florida last year, seeking to stop a purge of voter rolls meant to eliminate registrations by noncitizens. Government lawyers argued that the policy would also eliminate citizens’ registrations. In October a federal judge ruled that the purge could continue.

The Justice Department also challenged new voter identification laws in South Carolina and Texas, both of which need the department’s approval before implementing such measures under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because of a history of disenfranchising minority voters in nine Southern states.

Tennessee’s voter ID law has not come under a federal challenge, but the department did send monitors to Davidson County to observe the November election after a complaint that new training for poll workers might be discriminatory. Changes to Tennessee’s voting law do not require prior approval from the Justice Department, however.

Run on provisionals

The State Election Commission voted last week to conduct its own review of the Davidson County Election Commission, citing numerous missteps that state commissioners said had hurt public confidence.

One issue they plan to look at is shortages of the official envelopes needed to cast a provisional ballot at some polling locations. More envelopes were delivered to those locations on Election Day.

Davidson County officials say they were surprised by an 83 percent increase in requests for provisional ballots compared with the 2008 election. The jump in requests raises questions about whether some voters were unfairly removed from rolls, said a critic of the voting measures.

“We have to look at why there are provisional ballots,” said Mary Mancini, executive director of Tennessee Citizen Action. “We have to look a little more closely at the purging procedures and if they’re being applied fairly and equally.”

Elsewhere in Tennessee, Goins couldn’t say whether more people cast provisional ballots in 2012 than in elections past. He said the state did not previously compile data on provisional balloting. Goins said his office did so for last year’s elections only because of questions raised by the changes.

Billy Hughley of Davidson County was among those who cast his ballot provisionally. He said he voted for only the second time in his life in November, and for the first time in Tennessee.

Hughley, 45, said he registered to vote when he received a new Tennessee driver’s license over the summer. It wasn’t until he arrived at the polling place that he became aware of a problem with his registration.

Like other provisional voters contacted after the election, Hughley did not know whether his ballot was counted. State law requires election officials to contact voters if their ballot is not counted and try to resolve the problem.

“If they heard nothing back, their vote was counted,” said Albert Tieche, Davidson County election administrator.

But neither Hughley’s nor Hammond’s ballot was counted, according to election records. Neither voter said he had been notified by election officials.

Bipartisan reviews

Still, election officials said politics could not have played a role in the rejections.

They say that each provisional ballot is reviewed by two Democrats and two Republicans before it can be thrown out. Efforts are made to check state registration records, including those held by the Department of Safety, in an attempt to make sure records are up to date.

Provisional ballots are not unsealed until reviewers deem them valid. And the ballots themselves do not have any identifying information, making it impossible for election officials to link them to individual voters.

In some cases, ballots are rejected because voters do not follow up.

In November, 673 provisional ballots were cast in Tennessee because voters showed up at the polls without valid photo identification. Only 178 of those ballots were counted.

The rest were thrown out mainly because voters did not show up at their county election commission within two days to present a valid photo ID, as required by state law.

Elizabeth Huitt, 27, was one of those voters who did not. Huitt of West Meade said she saw no point to it after the outcome of the presidential election was clear.

Whether the experiences of voters like Huitt and others amount to disenfranchisement is a matter of debate.

Barrett argued that any voter being turned away is one too many.

“I haven’t heard this much controversy about an election since the 1960s, and that was deliberate,” he said. “I think it was deliberate this time. … It just didn’t work.”

But Goins said that the low number of provisional ballots requested statewide indicates no systematic bias was at work.

“I think a lot of people going into that election would have thought that number would be a lot higher.”